Obedience and Freedom

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, you can turn in your Bibles with me to Galatians chapter 2. Galatians chapter 2 is where we're going to be today. We are going to be continuing our series on breaking free, the gospel in Galatians. And we've been talking about these Galatian churches. In the letter to the Galatians, it's not just written to one church, but many churches. That makes it what it's called a circular letter. And so it's written to one church and it's intended for those churches to pass it around to other churches. And so what Paul is writing in the book or the letter of Galatians is something that is intended for many churches that he established. He went in, he preached, he made disciples, he organized those disciples into churches, and then when he left, things were going okay. He had established leaders and he had moved on, but since then, the churches have changed course and that actually gives the occasion for

this letter. So we find in chapter 1 verse 6 that they are turning to a different gospel, that it is a serious matter. Paul says that they are deserting Jesus. That's a really big deal. And part of the reason that he has to write this letter is because people are accusing Paul of making this up. They're accusing Paul of over, you know, making a big drama out of this story that didn't really happen. Anything to really cast doubt on the fundamental truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and personally revealed himself to Paul. And so Paul's response, I met Jesus firsthand. I didn't get the gospel from my old life. I didn't get the the gospel from the apostles, these other guys. In fact, and I didn't get it from their mission. In fact, what happened was the same Jesus that appeared to me also appeared to these disciples. And the reason that we're preaching the same

gospel message isn't because we got both, you know, got together beforehand and made sure our stories were straight, it's actually that Jesus revealed himself to both of us. That we are, or that I'm preaching the gospel Paul is saying I'm preaching the gospel because I met Jesus firsthand. This is also, this is anyone's confession if they are a Christian, right? There is a point that we move on from hearing about the gospel, hearing gospel information. We've looked at some of those last week, maybe our upbringing, we hear about the gospel, maybe our religious leaders, they tell us about the gospel. But there's a moment when we move on from those things and actually meet Jesus firsthand. Today, that was going to be a great example of that. We were going to have a baptism today, but those people who were going to get baptized got sick last night, really ill, and could not be baptized today. What a shame.

So I hope that they're going to be baptized here pretty soon. Sean and Cheryl Coffman are very under the weather today. But that is their confession, right? That they've heard about Jesus, they've been to church services, they've understood things about the gospel, maybe sort of, but there was a moment that they moved on from what they learned and moved on to a personal relationship with Jesus. That is a fundamental move that makes someone a Christian. Right? So what Paul does to answer these accusations is he builds this timeline. We went through that timeline last week. I will spare you that, but it's 17 plus years of timeline where Paul is saying how, how he kind of went about understanding the gospel and not getting it from these other churches. He punctuates this timeline. This is where we're going to be today in Galatians chapter 2. We're going to start in verse 11

And we're going to go all the way through Verse 21 Chapter 2 verses 11 through 21 or 20 today actually he so he punctuates this timeline with a confrontation He said so all this happened I you know I went here and met these people I went here and met these people I went and And then, and so in verse 11, we get to see what this confrontation is. And we don't get the sense that he planned this confrontation, but we discovered that this confrontation, this very confrontation that we're going to be looking at today has to do with why Paul is writing the letter to the Galatians in the first place. That he is going to confront Peter, he calls him Cephas in here. He's going to confront Peter on a specific matter. Okay, so let's read Galatians 2 11 through 13 It says but when Cephas Peter came to Antioch I opposed him to his face Because he stood condemned. That's a great verse

Verse 12 for before certain men came from James. He was eating with the Gentiles But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. Peter is illustrating this different gospel that Paul alludes to in chapter 1, verse 6. one verse six, Paul says, why are you turning to a different gospel? Don't do that. And here in two eleven, we're kind of finally understanding where this different gospel is coming from, why there's an occasion for this letter in the first place. And so we see that Peter is illustrating a different gospel. So let's break it down. Let's break down the confrontation by the people involved by the characters, right? So we have Cephas, who is Peter, he's a church leader, and he's Jewish,

which actually matters in this illustration or this breakdown here. Next, we have certain men from James. Certain men from James are also, in those verses, the men from the circumcision party. It's the same idea. And it's Jewish Christians who had a particular motive in mind. We'll get to that in a second. Third, we have the rest of the Jews, even Barnabas. Okay. So the rest of the Jews, the rest of these, these, you know, these guys are, are, are being led astray by this circumcision party. And then lastly, we have the Gentiles, which are Gentile Christians. Now Gentile, a Gentile is anyone that is not a Jew. Okay. Uh, anybody that is not a Jew. So here's what this means. Gentiles don't follow Old Testament laws like Jews did. Okay? So, this comes out in a couple of different ways, but Gentile Christians were not circumcised. Gentile Christians really have much of an understanding of what the Old Testament law was about.

They were largely ignorant. Many people during this time were illiterate, so it wasn't like they were going to go read the Old Testament Testament, you know, in Greek, they could barely read themselves. But the biggest point of contention was dietary restrictions. Dietary restrictions. So Jews would not eat pork. Jews would not eat anything that like still had the blood with it, so nothing raw. They wouldn't eat shellfish. There was a couple of things that they would not eat still today. Jews that observe dietary restrictions will not eat those things, lined out in Leviticus, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And so this is bristly for them in this church because to the Jews,

these the Jewish Christians in the church, these Gentile Christians look and act and sound unclean. And the fact is, and we learned this from Acts and I can demonstrate it, but it would take a long time, but just trust me here, you can go read it yourself later. The fact is that most disciples, most disciples didn't think that Gentiles could be Christians in the first place. They had, in fact, they had no idea. It wasn't that they were being racist, it's that they didn't really understand that Jesus, whenever He came and died, that He died for Gentiles too. That was actually news to them, okay? So whenever we are in Galatians and we are in a first century church and there are Jews and there are Gentiles in there, to say that their relationship was kind of fraught with a lot of tension is an understatement, okay? They didn't know how to be together. That's tough when two

two wildly different cultures try to come together in the same church. Imagine that. Two wildly different cultures coming together in the same church. Strange. I wonder what that's like. Sometimes it's just so obvious you've got to say it, right? But this is where Jesus came in and personally dealt with it. find out in Acts, he gives a vision to Peter, right? Peter, the guy who's doing all this stuff, he shows Peter that Gentiles are clean, right? He says, hey, God says, hey, don't call unclean what I call clean, okay? So Jesus has already shown Peter in a vision that Gentiles are clean, and Jesus also appeared to Paul in a vision to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. so that they could become Christians, right? So you had Peter and men from James and Jewish Christians, even Barnabas, acting hypocritically. These guys were Old Testament following, circumcised, no poor eating people.

And then on the other side, you had Gentile Christians who were Greek, uncircumcised, they would eat anything, they didn't really care. In fact, some of them, right after they became Christians, didn't really understand that they couldn't worship in other temples. Like, that's how foreign this whole Christianity thing was to the Greeks. So then the question becomes, how do we include these new people, these Gentiles, in the church? So, let me just say, these Jewish Christians understood a basic concept. They understood that Gentiles could become Christians. They were like, okay, I can handle that.

But they didn't know what that meant for them. You see, because they were still Jews, right? They were still Jews. They didn't know if they could associate with Gentiles still. They could love them from afar, right? But they didn't know about sharing meals with them. It was a genuine It's an genuine area of concern, and it's hard to even talk about today with it not sounding like racism in our modern culture, but it wasn't. It was actually real, worrisome concerns. They didn't know how to handle this. However, Paul is not feeling sorry for Peter and the men from James and the circumcision party or even Barnabas and the crew. He's not feeling sorry for them because we find out in verse 14, right? So Paul's opposing Peter to his face and says, but when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you,

Though a Jew lived like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews? What a great question. That's kind of the crux of what's going on. How can you force Gentiles to live like Jews? Well, how is he doing it? How is he forcing these people? Again, this is the distortion of the gospel that we are talking about from 1-6. So Peter is forcing Gentiles to live like Jews. And again, it can seem like racism. It can seem like racism, but there's more here going on. It's not just simple racism. They don't just think they're better than Gentiles. It's not quite that simple because what Paul is saying is, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews, not how can you say Jews are better than Gentiles or, you know, how can you treat Gentiles like second-class citizens or anything like that? There's a little more going on, so let's keep reading.

Versus 15 and 16, just in the beginning part of 16, it says, we ourselves, so this is Paul speaking to Peter. We, you and me, Peter, we ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. You have to understand a little bit of sarcasm to understand that verse. Okay. So Paul is saying to Peter, Hey, look, we, we know we're Jews, me and you, we're, we're clean Jews, not dirty Gentiles. Okay. It says 16 though. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So Paul here is openly defying racial distinctions.

He's saying to Peter, look, I know that like we're clean and they're dirty, but yet, or like it says in 16, yet we know that a person is not justified before God by doing Jewish things. We know in fact that a person is justified in a whole different way. And so he's kind of looking at Peter in the eye going, you know, better. You know, you saw the vision. Jesus told you, you know better, Peter.

But you are not acting in step with that. And here we are getting to the core of the apple. We are getting to the meat of the matter. Let's read all of verse 16. All of verse 16, yet, sorry, Galatians 2 16. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. Central to the gospel, right? Remember, this whole thing is about a distorted gospel. Here we see central to the gospel is how a person is justified. The how is actually the crux of the argument. The how actually differentiates between what is true gospel and what is false gospel. The how is what has been twisted. That's why we have a distorted gospel. That's why the Galatian church is in trouble of becoming not a church.

That's why they're in trouble. They're, they're, they're almost deserting Jesus. Okay. It's because of the how. So I can't really overstate how important the how is. I can't, it's there. It's big. So the false how of someone being justified, the false how is following rules. obeying the law. That's not how a person is justified. The true how is that they are justified by faith in Jesus alone, not following rules. Okay, to really grasp this note though, we need to understand what it means to be justified because we're kind of throwing that word around. Let's really know it. Justification is being made right. So let me give you an illustration. In 1997, just a few years ago, the New York Times reported in a New York high school that there was a student that was walking down the hall and that student just rared back and just, just socked another guy in the face and he knocked him unconscious.

They were just passing in the hallway, knocked the guy completely unconscious. an administrator was standing right there. Okay? So the administrator is just monitoring the hall. All of a sudden she sees one student just put a haymaker on the other student and knock him unconscious. And the administrator proceeded to take that student in to get punished. That makes total sense, right? Everybody, if we're that administrator and we see that happen, we're taking that kid by the arm and saying, hey, you're coming with me, buddy. We're going to the office. But the student who punched the other student protested. Hard. He goes, no, no, no. He says, look in his hand. And the administrator stopped, looked at the hand of the unconscious student, and there was a gun in that kid's hand. That kid had a gun out and was planning to use it. The gun was in his hand. And when that kid saw the other kid with the gun in his hand, the only thing he knew

to do was to knock him unconscious. Yeah, and that the student who punched him was immediately absolved of his guilt when they found the gun And the gun-toting student was you know woken up and turned into police When he punched another student his action seemed wrong Right, but when the gun was discovered the action was actually shown to be justified The action was shown to be justified. The student, it showed that the student was in the right to knock another student out.

The student was justified, his behavior was justified. And so when it says a person is not justified by the works of the law in verse 16, it means that following rules is never going to make you right. It's never going to show you that you were in the right the whole time. That's not how that works. And it says when a person is justified through faith in Jesus Christ, it means if we have faith in Jesus Christ, that God does not judge you by what you do wrong. Rather, if we have faith in Jesus Christ, God judges you by what Jesus does right. Let me say it again. If we have faith in Jesus, God does not judge you by what you do wrong. God judges you by what Jesus actively does right on your behalf. God sees us in Jesus' righteousness. And this is why the great truths of Scripture are true. This is Romans 8:1 says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Let me ask you, how can there be no condemnation for a sinner like me? I've done awful things. I deserve condemnation. I haven't measured up to God. Neither have any of you. How is there no condemnation? There's no condemnation, not because God was feeling, you know, permissive that day. There's no condemnation because Jesus took it. Jesus took our condemnation. There's none left. There's no wrath left. Jesus took it for us. If we have faith and if Jesus took our condemnation, this is the gospel, plain and simple. It does not give us new rules to follow. The gospel says that Jesus actively follows rules for you.

Actively, Jesus makes you righteous when you believe. And not just once, but on a continual basis. And we will see that as we keep going. The distortion of this gospel is that Peter was demonstrating that Jewish rules can make you clean, that they can make you right with God, but they can't. The only thing that is making you clean is Jesus alive in you. Now there's a natural question that comes up on this point and it's a good one. It's not like you're seeking a way out, but the question becomes something like this, some variation of this. It says, if obeying rules does not make us clean. That's true, it doesn't. Then what do we do with obedience? Do we just throw it out? Does it not matter? Well this is the question that is put in the next two verses in Galatians, Galatians chapter two verses 17 and 18. It's written a little strangely, but we can roll with it. It says,

But if in our endeavor to be justified by, or in Jesus Christ, sorry, let me start over, 17, but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Obviously not. For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. So Jesus is making me right with God. However, that is not a free pass for me to then go do whatever I want. Right? I don't get just a hall pass because Jesus has made me right. Okay, well, cool. If Jesus made me right, I'm going to go live like hell while I'm going on my way to heaven. Right? That's not true. It doesn't happen. It doesn't work that way. Practically, how does this play out? And this is Paul's aim in the next two verses, verses 19 and 20. It says, for through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live,

but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Okay, that's a lot. So we're going to break it up into two parts to really grab ahold of it. Okay. We've got, basically we've got death and life. So on one side, we've got, I died to the law for through law. I died to the law and I'm crucified with Christ. There we go. So in this, in the first part of 19, I died to the law. First part of 20, I had been crucified with Christ. That's, that's the same idea that we're going to be covering today. Now that, What it's saying is that obedience, obeying the law, following the rules in order to be made right, is futile. It killed me. I couldn't do it. It was a 10,000 foot wall. I could not scale. I couldn't climb over it. The law is not meant to inspire you to go to perfection. The law is a 10,000 foot wall that should help you understand how unscalable it is.

And so with that, with that, right, we can joyfully declare. We say, hey, I'm going to walk away from all that rule following. I'm going to walk away from all that trying to impress anybody with how obedient I am. It's dead anyway. I'm free. I'm joyous. I don't need to do that. And you know what, I say amen, right? I say amen to that. We've successfully, we've taken power away from the law to condemn you. And there's reason for joy there. However, however, it doesn't solve the basic problem of obedience. Let me explain. Someone could say, someone could say to you, hey, I don't, hey, I don't need to follow the laws. I'm a Christian. I don't need to follow rules. You know, I'm saved by grace, not by rules. So I'm not obeying the rules. Saying, I don't need to impress anyone. I don't need to seem religious. I don't need to do all those things. However, all that

That may be true, but God still requires obedience. God did not quit requiring obedience. God still says, be holy as I am holy. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is saying, no, 1 Peter 1 is be holy as I am holy. And then in Matthew 5, whenever Jesus is doing the Sermon on the Mount and he's preaching He says, look, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you can't see the kingdom of God. God still requires obedience. And when you stand before God, if all you have to say is, hey, God, I saw that rule following was futile, so I just quit following your rules. That's not a really great report. That will not go well. But it is nevertheless true that you did die to the law. If you have faith in Christ, you were crucified with Christ. The law doesn't have a hole in you anymore, but it's only the first part. The second part is that Jesus, he did die your death, but that's only, it didn't stop

there. We see in the second part, it says, for through the law I died to the law, why? So that I could not follow rules anymore? No, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. Okay, tell me about it. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. I live my life by faith now. It's different. Jesus actually lives your life now. present tense. He didn't just die your death, he also lives your life. And someone who is alive to God, if Jesus living in them, Jesus empowers, ignites, inspires, encourages obedience to God in us.

Why? Because obedience to God is what we were created for. When we are obedient to God, that is exactly where we need to be. Our whole body, our whole mind, our whole soul, our whole spirit, it all comes together whenever we are being obedient to God. And when we talk about spiritual growth, that's exactly what we're talking about. It is living your life in a way that is conducive, in a way that is cooperative with the spirit working in you, Jesus living in you. When you cooperate with that, you grow. When you fight that, you don't.

And it's not that easy, but it is that simple. Jesus is living your life for you. He's living in you, right? How does he do this? How does he inspire you toward obedience? The Bible says in Ezekiel, the Bible says lots of other places, that Jesus gives us a new heart. He changes what we want. That's what having a new heart mean. Jesus changes our desires, right? The mark of going from spiritual death to spiritual life, the mark of going from rebellion from the Lord to friend of the Lord, right? The mark of that is that you want to please the Lord. You want to obey. It doesn't mean that you obey every time. It doesn't mean that you're perfect, but it does mean that you desire at the core of your heart to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel, like it talks about in Philippians 1. We want to obey. We struggle toward obeying.

This is why Christians can have agreement. This is why churches can have unity. It's because we are going for the same thing. We all want to please the Lord. I'm not saying I'm gonna agree with everybody and everything, and I'm not saying you gotta agree with me and everything, But the thing we do have to agree on is that we all want to please the Lord. All, each and every one of us, we have to. That is how we function as the body of Christ, because Christ is our head, because he's in control. There's a great line in the Old Testament and it's repeated over and over and over again. It's God speaking to his prophets and he's saying what he's going to do, do, and this is in Jeremiah 33, this is in Ezekiel 36, this is several other places. Joel, whenever God is saying what's going to happen, he says, look, one day, one day, this law that you have, it won't be far off, it won't be on a mountaintop, it won't be across the

sea, it'll be on your lips, it'll be in your heart. Why? Why would God bring the law us. Why would God do that? Because He desires for us to be obedient. And not just to be obedient, but to be obedient from the heart. In the Old Testament you see that phrase all the time. Obedient from the heart. God desires for us to obey from the heart. And when you think about it, if you think about any, you know, raising children. You don't even have to be a parent to get this, but raising children. What do you want for your children to do? You don't want them just to obey your every command, well, some days. I mean, nobody, hey, hey, hey, I'm not above it. However, what is our deepest desire as parents? That our children will obey from the heart, that they'll want to help with dishes, that they'll want to take out the trash, that they'll want to be a servant, right?

That's our desire. I don't want my children to be, you know, robots that just go do my bidding and come back and wait for another thing for me to ask for. That's terrible. I don't want that. They don't want that. I want them to obey from the heart. God wants that, except, you know, 50 times more or infinite times more. God wants it perfectly for all of us. He wants us to obey from the heart. He wanted so much. He wanted so much that he sent his son to die so that we could have a new heart. When Jesus saves us, he doesn't just scoop us up into heaven. When Jesus saves us, He begins to make us new from the inside out. It's because what Jesus prays, it says,

whenever he's teaching the disciples to pray, what does he pray? He says, thy will be done, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. God's kingdom fleshed out on earth. That's part of our vision as a church. It's part of any church efficient. That's not like unique to us. We didn't make that up. That's God's heart. He wants to see a people that are his family. So Jesus living in you makes you obedient

and ultimately free. Now follow me on this. You can't be free unless you're obedient. You can't. They don't work any other way. We'll explore that as we keep going through Galatians. But you cannot be free unless you are obedient. Jesus knows that and he made you obedient. He made you obedient. First, before you deserved it, before you were doing anything, before you even cared about it. Jesus had a plan for you to not just redeem you, not just save you from death, but to make you an obedient child of God. With Philippians 1:6, he says, He who started a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Jesus Christ. What do you think that work is if it is not making you into the image of Jesus Himself?

That's what we're going for. When we talk about what is going on in the book of Galatians, this is what we're talking about. It's the crux of the gospel. It's people not understanding what the Lord wants for them and what He has done for them. There's no way it's gonna make sense. So we don't have it up there, but the last verse really sums it up well. It says, verse 21, excuse me, Galatians two, it says, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. That's not a, hey, they don't throw that phrase around, much the New Testament, okay? Christ died for no purpose. That's not just a superlative they throw around when they feel like making something matter. That's a real big deal. Righteousness, being justified, being made right, being made clean before God only happens through faith. It doesn't happen as you follow rules. The church had forgotten that. The church in Galatia

We're running rampant with people that were saying, Gentiles need to act like Jews before they're Christians or before they're real Christians. So if Jesus living in you makes you obedient, ultimately free, how do we take hold of this? Well, we're gonna have a time of response, and I wanna encourage you on two fronts. First, I wanna encourage you to put your old life to death. to death. I know that's a basic, that's a first step, but some of you haven't taken that step. I want you to consider, if you don't need that old life anymore, why are you holding on to it? And I want to challenge you during this time, we're going to be singing three songs. And I'm going to be standing up here, just over here to my right, your left. I want to challenge you to a time of repentance where you just pray. During our response time, you just confess your heart to God. It is a good thing to do. You don't need to do it out loud.

Most of you just don't. Don't try it. Don't do it out loud. Confess privately. If you need help, I will be up here, like I said, and you can come and ask for help. I'll pray with you. I'll help you figure out what that next step is. The other thing, I want to challenge you to ask Jesus to make you alive to obedience. I think so often Christians feel like they just need to middle along, right? Like, man, I'm not perfect. I'm not even great. I'm not even sort of a good Christian. I'm just gonna try to not mess up today. But look, Jesus didn't die for you to not mess up and sit in a pew. Jesus died to make you a mean. He died for you to aspire to good works. Not fame, not fortune, but in heaven, I mean huge, right? In heaven, those that quietly do good works are first in line, Jesus tells us. I want you begin to ask Jesus to make you alive to the obedience. So during this response

time, you know, like it talks about in Acts 3, it says, repent therefore that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. And that is good. Let this be a time of refreshing as we sing. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for your heart. Thank you for the grace that you've given us. I pray that as we sing, as we listen, that you would move, that you would help us, that we would know that you are alive in us and that we would wake up to that, that we would make a move toward that. That's your name that we pray.

Just to rest upon His promise, and to know the sith of your Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how to more end Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust Him. Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus, just to trust His cleansing bud, And in simple faith to plunge me These the healing cleansing flood Is us, Jesus, how I trust Him And in more and more Jesus, Jesus Precious Jesus, oh for a race to trust Him, O best is sweet. You trust in Jesus, just from sin and self to cease.

Just from sin, simply taking life and rest and joy and peace. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I burn Him more and more. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for the grace to trust Him more. I'm so glad I learned to trust Him. Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend, And I know that Thou art with me, Wilt be with me to Thee. Jesus, Jesus, I know I trust Him. And more and more Jesus Jesus, precious Jesus Oh for grace to trust Him more Oh for grace to trust Him more Oh for grace to trust Him more